What Is African American Imperialism

It is human nature to search for the differences within each other rather than embrace our similarities. This can be seen through many common themes today such as sexism, classism, and especially racism. Individuals have excluded others with these differences, sometimes going as far as to say they were less than human. This detrimental belief leaves little room for understanding and acceptance between cultures. Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, tells the story of African imperialism while portraying the natives as primitive beings. Critic Paul B. Armstrong writes, “Heart of Darkness is a calculated failure to depict achieved cross-cultural understanding”. By purposely dehumanizing others, Conrad works to justify hash imperialist methods. …show more content…
He fails to see that through the presence of white men, captured individuals are serving their oppressor's desires. This culturally unrealistic view has been set forth as an absolute truth in the eyes of white men for centuries, that in fact they were helping these " new-caught, sullen peoples,/ half-devil, and half-child"(Kipling). Yet this is not true; the greatest burden has been the burden of the enslaved natives, which is far worse, as Edward D. Morel points out in his poem, "The Black Man's Burden". Morel contrasts Kipling's arguments through discussing how King Leopold II relied on the exploitation of slave labor and the depletion of their naturally occurring resources. "It attacks the African at every turn,/ from every point of vantage. It wrecks his polity, uproots him/ from the land, invades his family life, destroys his natural/ pursuits and occupations, claims his whole time, enslaves him in/ his own home..."(Morel). Psychologically native people are being destroyed in a way worse than death. Unlike the white men, they do not have a benefit gained from resources, gold, or fame; All that is left to them is the terror and manipulation brought upon their homes. This theme is shown throughout Heart of Darkness. When Marlow speaks …show more content…
Recently a well known singer, Taylor Swift, unintentionally glorified colonization in her music video “Wildest Dreams”. Through portraying a Hollywood movie couple filming in a rural African setting, one can not only spot bare land without any hint of nearby human existence, but also large variety exotic animals. In spite of the fact that the video proceeds were raising money for wildlife organizations, and Taylor Swift had not meant to feed into cultural appropriation in any way, the effects of her video are here to stay. Whether commercials display starving and sick African children, or high end fashion designers use afrocentric patterns on the runway, or Taylor Swift glorifies the beautiful lions in the wide open safari, in the end a hugely biased view about Africa forms. A young African American woman names, Amandla Stenberg, discusses this issue in her video titled, "Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows”. Stenberg defines her point as, "Appropriation occurs when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originated, but is deemed high fashion, cool or funny when the privileged take it for themselves." The way in which individuals use cultural appropriation today is just as awful as the dehumanization of Africans throughout imperialism. One justifies exploiting African individuals for labor whereas the other displays their culture as